7 Overlooked Ways To Beat The Bookies

Gambling is, by its very nature, a risk-ridden way to fill your time or even to try and make money. But, when done sensibly, it can also be a fun and exciting addition to watching sport.

It’s all about finding the best value for money. Whether that’s the right prices, the right markets or even the best time to put your bet on, follow these tips from an decades long experienced tipster and see if you can make the most from your gambling hustles.

1. Know your sport inside out

It’s not just about which football team has won their last six games but how well they have really played offensively and defensively. Were they good at keeping possession or were they lucky?

These are the kinds of details that will inform your betting and will better prepare you for spotting those good-value markets.

2. The favourite doesn’t always win

This seems obvious to point out but it is difficult for any punter to ignore the price bookies have given.

On the surface this always make sense.

What the bookmakers had overlooked was that Fognini had beaten Nadal on clay only a few months earlier in Rio De Janeiro. Combine this with Fognini’s record of knocking out top seeds and suddenly his 8/1 price is looking very attractive.

Fognini went on to beat Nadal in straight sets.

3. The fewer selections, the better

This is something that, even though it seems like common sense, punters forget all the time. The fewer selections you include in your bet, the more chance you stand of winning.

If you’re betting to make money think small, not big. One team or selection if you can stake enough. Three or four maximum. Once you find yourself putting that 20-fold accumulator on, you really are on cloud cuckoo land.

Bookies lose most of their money from singles. An extreme example would be some high-roller coming into a shop and putting N10,000,000 on a 1.67 odds shot.

Just one single at an odds-on price but the shop would have to turnover N6,700,000 to cover that payout alone.

If you do enough research, you should feel relatively safe putting N5,000 to N10,000 on one selection. But trebles usually offer a decent return if you really do want a higher payout.

4. Avoid the temptation of odds-on prices

If you do find yourself desperately wanting that long-shot bet on a Saturday afternoon, do not pad out your accumulator with odds-on selections. You’re decreasing your chance of winning for next to no extra cash.

This is really easy to do in tennis. It’s the opening week of a Grand Slam and you see the top players are all drawn against relative unknowns.

It would seem like a great idea to lump them altogether in a multiple to try and win some easy money. But this would be a mistake.

Tennis is notorious for offering terrible prices on match-betting and so you could put the world’s elite in a ten-fold and still only manage to scrape returns at 4 odds.

Is it really worth N10,000 to only treble your money when any single loss at a price of 1.13 (for example) would result in your entire bet going down? Probably not.

It would make more sense to do some research and find an up-and-coming player who has a favourable draw and back them at a better price.